


Of Cabbages and Kings

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series, Rare Pairings, unusual pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 20:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Pre-series. The time has come for Sir Edward of Knighton, current Sheriff of Nottingham, to ensure his ongoing job security. Taking Marian along as he renews his bid for the office seemed like a good idea.





	Of Cabbages and Kings

**AD 1189 -**  He was surrounded by snakes. He, John, favored son of Old Henry, out of Aquitaine's witch Eleanor, was surrounded by snakes. All the councilors his brother had left him with--absolute vipers--singing the praises of Richard, working for the good of  _Richard_. How dull. How predictable. How...unlovely.  
  
  
Their father had wished  _him_  to have England, after all.  _That_  had not changed until Richard had fought Henry into a corner, securing their dying father's total, un-rescindable capitulation. To  _Richard_. Who again decided to prance off to war.  
  
  
How boring. How drear the likely homeland Court of a monarch at war. Monies to the war, instead of to banquets, to gaily-colored clothes, ridiculously-sized jewels for mistresses, for other men's wives who were not yet your mistresses, but whom you would like to hurry along on their eventual path to your bed.  
  
  
_What was wrong with a spot of fun, after all?_  Richard found war fun. He certainly had made a royal hobby of it. Why couldn't John, then, pursue fun in the way he best liked it? Were they not both later sons, after all? Really, truly, on par with one another? Their claims to the throne not that inequitable since Young Henry's death? Splitting hairs, really, figuring that out.  
  
  
And so it was to be Lincoln, and the royal exchequer, for him, and him supposedly appointing men to positions that his mother, Richard's designated regent, had likely already promised to entirely different nobles.  
  
  
_Humph_. Even sighing about it brought him nothing but further ennui.  
  


* * *

  
  
Her father had told her ladies maid to have her things packed for Lincoln. "It is time I must visit the new King's Court, to petition and pay homage and respect in order to retain my seat as sheriff."  
  
  
"Though King Richard is not there?" Marian had asked.  
  
  
"You will accompany me," Edward informed her, as was his way, glossing over questions she asked that he had no desire to answer.  
  
  
"What, so I may simper and flirt while the men of the Court leer and congratulate you on  _me_?"  
  
  
"Marian," Edward bemoaned, his patience with his teenaged daughter's unseemly headstrong objections long-grown thin. " _Why_  must you protest so against the way our world works? Ones' family has always been important politically." He let his own persuasive righteous indignation creep into his tone. "Is it wrong of me to wish to throw everything possible into the ring where my--where  _our_ \--position in the world is concerned?"  
  
  
He had not mentioned the smudge on her reputation where the broken betrothal with Robin of Locksley was concerned. Perhaps it was because of his kind omission of that fact that Marian came about, reversing her opinion, agreeing almost docilely to the idea. "Yes, Father, as you say. I shall look to see where I shall best do some good."  
  


* * *

  
  
But of course she had not been thinking to do good in the particular way that she had shortly found herself swept up into once arriving in Lincoln. No fewer than three chambermaids had been set at plaiting her hair. Two more to lace her gown, and three others doing tasks she was not even sure what they were.  
  
  
Once they had finished and left her, her father (the busy sheriff so rarely a visitor to her private chambers at home) paid her a call.  
  
  
She tried not to show in her demeanor the coming-on slow burn she felt, but her tongue was always another matter. "So, you are of a mind to throw me at John Lackland?"   
  
  
It was the sort of statement, rendered with the sort of attitude, at which most nobles' daughters would receive swift, physical discipline. A rough slap, or possible lashing to recall themselves to their station.  
  
  
Edward had never been one for crude, reactionary violence, no matter the inciting cause. He preferred reasoned debate (though not particularly with his intractable daughter). Instead of accepting her confrontation as something to which he ought respond, he forged ahead, knowing that no matter her present bite, she  _would_  do as he willed. A man in true power, after all, need not assert himself in proving such to those under his care--and rule. "Consider," he reminded her, "yourself--consider  _both of us_  fortunate that he enjoys the company of women."  
  
  
"'Women' you say?" she scoffed, though quietly--here, there might be listening ears anywhere, " _I_  saw a gaggle of thirteen-year-olds clustered about him today. And Natalie of Garth--who cannot yet have passed eleven winters!"  
  
  
Edward shook his head. "Do not worry about your age..."  
  
  
"Worry?" her mind spun at his reaction-- _worry that she was older than thirteen?_  "What sort of a man is so bewitched by the fawning praise of children?"  
  
  
He cut her off before she could go on. "He was his father's favorite, and his mother's petted baby. You can do this, Marian.  _If_  you set your mind to it," yes, he knew he had her with that. " _Think_  of what you might accomplish for us. Consider--we at present occupy a precarious place in this new order.  _I_  have never met Richard. I was a supporter of his father. But it is not Richard whose heart must be won today. It is John's. Lord Winchester apprised me several days ago by courier that  _John_  would apportion all the shire offices."  
  
  
Marian's ears caught onto the meat of what her father was saying, was sharing with her. She was not so immature (as was Natalie of Garth) not to know that her father spoke the truth. Their very future lay in the balance. And anything they could throw into the ring (or at the Prince's feet, as it were)  _must_  be made use of, be brought to bear.  
  


* * *

  
  
There was a small table set with goblets for not-yet-poured wine, grapes and other rare fruits she had never seen before on a silver charger in the room to which she had been shown. There was also a massive bed, almost the size of a modest sailing vessel. Surely nearly as large as the ones her father had once described as used on the Thames. Her brain attempted to calculate for her the number of men at oars its mattress might accommodate.  
  
  
_Why was she in a cloak?_  Surely it was not that cool of a day indoors. Nor, as far as she knew, was this an illicit meeting, for which she ought shield her identity. She felt an odd, unaccustomed shiver at the thought that, perhaps, the Prince enjoyed the unwrapping of his...gifts. It was not a pleasant thought.  
  


* * *

  
  
John had entered the room mid-sentence, followed originally by more than a few of the same simpering young girls, sycophantically toadying over him like he was Apollo come to earth. They were followed in by a handful of courtiers and what seemed to be advisors. By the time the door to the chamber had been shut, the people in it numbered half the population of Clun. One bracelet on any of the girls' hands worth more than the contents of that meager village's entire granary.  
  
  
She stood to the side, uncertain what she was meant to do next. She tried to get free of being quite so near the poster bed. In the press and swirl of people about the Prince, it proved no easy task.  
  
  
When she did manage to move, she found herself swept closer to his inner circle of conversation.  
  
  
One of his advisors (Marian did not know the man on sight) was trying very hard to bend his ear.  
  
  
"Lord--" the man's title, as said by the Prince, was lost in the noise and flurry, "what care  _We_ ," John gestured with the grapes, "for the price of a cabbage? What. Is a cabbage. To  _Us_?"  
  
  
The baron in question further attempted to impress upon the man vested with England's keeping about the current state of inflation in the wake of Richard's newest war-tax. This, the necessary business of state, trying to be done over the noise of pre-teen girls squealing in delight, desperate for the Prince to pluck a grape and pop it by his own, flirtatious hand, into their straining-for-his-attention mouths.  
  
  
"Your Highness," Marian's tongue engaged before she had thought twice about what it might say. The room, in its frenzy, seemed for an instant to freeze. "The price of a simple cabbage is all. To the farmer, the laborer, the villager hoping to buy at market day, hoping to sell. Cabbage is a staple of the poor. Of every peasant's table. If it cannot be bought--or sold--for a fair price, families will go hungry. People will die."  
  
  
The room unfroze, but took on an anticipatory quality--as a sickroom where all waited for an invalid's last exhale of breath.  
  
  
"Wait." John broke into the stillness. "Are you trying to talk politics to me?  _My dear_." His eyes alighted on her, zeroing in on hers, turning immediately keen. "I fear you have been mis-informed. That is not the kind of interview this is." At this, he flicked his wrist dramatically toward the door, and the room speedily emptied of all but them. Door shut, silence fell. Just them. And that bed. Alone.  
  
  
As Marian had thought he might, he walked toward where she stood, undoing her cloak where it had been simply (and impractically) tied with only ribbons at her throat. Its own weight caused it to fall dramatically to the ground, encircling her at her feet.  
  
  
" _Whose_  daughter did you say you were?" an eyebrow popped up in the arching.  
  
  
"The Sheriff of Nottingham's, your Highness." She had the good sense, at least, to lower her eyes and curtsey at this.  
  
  
" _Oooooo_." He almost clapped. "I've heard about you! Nothing good, mind you. Except that you  _are_  good looking. And you are.  _Very_  pretty." He considered. "But not  _too_  pretty to stand next to me. That is important, of course. ...And serious." He shook his head from side to side. "Yes, they always say that. Never a good qualifier for a woman--a girl, really. A head for politics. You see where that has landed my mother--" his tone grew exaggeratedly weepy, "repeatedly in the Tower. Of course, though, she did first lie with two kings, who sired upon her consorts, princes... _kings_." He shrugged, nearly having completed his second circling of her. "Perhaps such is worth the trade-off. I shall never know. You, however,  _you_  may choose to find out." He leaned in.  
  


* * *

  
  
The door of another chamber pushed quietly open. Several birds of various breeds and sizes could be heard, busy about their cages.  
  
  
"Yes, my Prince?"  
  
  
John's ears pricked with delight upon sighting Vaisey in the private chamber at the other end of the secret corridor he had used to escape the room still holding the (now dreaded) Lady Marian of Knighton. " _Henry's Bones_ ," the Prince swore in his father's name, "that was rather  _gruesome_."  
  
  
"Your Highness?" the other man left room for John to elaborate.  
  
  
"She tastes...of the royal exchequer, Man.  _Urgh_." He made a slight retching noise. "I shall have her back again only ere I (like my brother, as we are told) grow curious in  _that_  direction." His eyes rolled.  
  
  
John watched the other man's reaction to his pronouncing the Sheriff of Nottingham's offer of his teenaged daughter to warm the princely bed as distasteful, as utterly rejected.  
  
  
"Then we are in accord? Your very, very,  _very_  Highness?"  
  
  
"Fetch the wax, Vaisey." John encouraged the man whom he would now appoint to that post to gather the necessary tools for sealing their lucrative and mutually beneficial deal. "After all, it is said, 'never engage a Saxon to do a  _Norman's_  job'."  
  
  
"No, no," heartily agreed the man now scurrying for wax and paper and scribe, himself caring little for Saxons or Normans--or for that matter kings and princes. For anyone that was not--in point of fact, him. Him, forthwith and ever after, the Sheriff of Nottingham.  
  
  


**The End**

 

**Author's Note:**

> As for this very light of light entertainments, please excuse me (as you have had to similarly excuse the BBC series on many counts) from any historical (or agricultural) inaccuracies in regard to timeline or the monarchy contained within. This was not a heavily researched piece.


End file.
